Author's Note: (Original Character) Takes place in the Star Wars universe 9 ABY. One of the splintered imperial factions, the Vast Empire, survives and continues to Thrive. This is a story about one of their troopers and her training after enlisting in the army. More stories about Havock and other Vast Empire troopers can be found at www. vastempire .com/main/
'Ring', 'ring', 'ring'. Havock shot up in bed, grabbing her pistol from under the pillows in one swift motion has she did. Her eye twitched at the alarm clock, pistol still raised. With a growl, Hav, dropped her arm down with a thud to the mattress and got up to silence the annoying clock in a more conventional fashion.
Havock sat back down on the mattress, sliding the pistol back under her pillow as she plopped back into a sitting position. She rubbed her eyes and face trying to wake herself up, then her data pad 'beeped'.
Havock let out a growl as she stood back up to get the datapad whose sound was now invading her space. "Oh come on, can't a girl get any sleep around here?" She pushed a few buttons and realized it was an event reminder. "Oh, new VC class today. Weather, huh?" Glancing at the chrono on the nearby table, Havock could see that she needed to be in the Maintenance Garage in just a bit over an hour, which only led to another string of curse words under her breath.
Running to the fresher to get washed and ready Havock had no time to even glance at the reading material she should have had prepared for class today.
Havock walked up to the garage and waved quickly at Caden as she joined the already assembled group. Sergeant Harris was pacing, pushing buttons on his datapad. Glancing up, he stood a little taller looking over at Havock as she arrived. Harris quickly finished up whatever he was doing on the datapad and with a 'pfft' he put the pad in his pocket.
"Good morning, Troopers." He looked at the group of young men and women. "Congratulations on getting this far in your training. Today we are going to start learning about controlling these vehicles in various climates. First I'm going to give you the basics, some techniques you can use. Then you are going to be assigned a vehicle, by me, that vehicle you are going to run them through as many weather conditions as we can find. And yes that may mean a trip off world to find some in-climate weather."
Caden looked over at Havock, his eyes we're desperately searching for an answer, but Hav couldn't understand the silent question.
Caden chewed on his lip for a second before lifting his hand into the air, "Sir." Harris pointed at Caden, his arms slumped just slightly, as if he dreaded these questions troopers managed to come up with.
Caden took a deep breath. "Sir, can you tell us what vehicle we will be piloting? At least will it be part of our sub-specialty? And where will we be going? And…"
"Corporal!" Harris interrupted what was quickly turning into a string of even more questions, he took a long breath before continuing. "We are going to have a lecture which will cover all of those questions. In fact, let's go so we can get started. Dismissed."
The class had all taken their seats by the time Sergeant Harris walked through the doors. He kept the lights on, which was a nice change after the last few lectures that involved long periods of time in a darkened room staring at the holoprojector.
"Weather conditions can challenge the best drivers. You need to remember three "P's": Prepare, Protect, and Prevent." He turned and wrote the three words on the board behind him. "First we prepare. How do you prepare for weather, I know I can read your minds. You need to keep your vehicle maintained. Check the engine, the tire tread, keep the windows clean in those AT-ATs, and make sure the fluid levels are where they should be. By maintaining the vehicle you can reduce the possibility of an accident occurring. Second, make an emergency kit. You need a glow rod, jumper cables, and abrasive material for traction, a shovel, snow brush, ice scraper, flares, and blankets. All of these items should be prepared ahead of time and in your vehicle when you travel. Third, plan your route. Make sure you have plenty of time to get where you are going, do not rush. Be familiar before you leave with the map and terrain of the location you are traveling to." Harris finished the last few sentences as he wrote an outline of what he just said under the word 'prepare' written on the board.
"Next we have protect. Use your safety gear, make sure your helmets and comms are functioning properly before you roll out. Don't try anything stupid while in route, you should be focused on the mission and maintaining the safety of your squad with that giant hunk of durasteel your driving."
"Last, we prevent. We prevent problems from happening before they happen. I better never catch you guys drinking on duty, that's number one. Watch your distances from other vehicles and objects, use the radar. This is the most important when the weather is not perfect, you need to take slippery, wet, and snowy conditions into account. Make sure you are well rested when you are driving, even if that means you may need to rotate drivers."
"Now I'm going to show you an example of what could happen if you don't follow these rules." Sergeant Harris tapped on a few buttons in the console of the pedestal near where he was standing. The lights dimmed as the holoprojector buzzed to life.
The light projected an image of a snowy landscape. Hav could see a tracked vehicle make its way on what had to be an icy road in those conditions. They could hear the comm traffic between the driver and the instructor sitting in the passenger seat. The driver was tasked to refuel two other army vehicles while traveling on local roadways.
Harris spoke up, "The driver was briefed before he left base. He was to clear the snow from their vehicles and conduct preventative maintenance checks on the vehicle before leaving. Then while in transit they were to maintain proper speeds for these road conditions."
Havock drew her attention back to the holo. The roads were clear, but a light snow started to fall just as the operation began. The snowfall continued to increase and the roads became covered in snow. As the driver crested a hill the comm cracked to life. The instructor was advising the driver to slow down. Unfortunately the driver overreacted pressing the brake pedal causing the vehicle to loose traction. The rear of the vehicle jackknifed into the oncoming traffic lane, striking a civilian vehicle and continued to skid along the road hitting yet another civilian vehicle before finally coming to a halt.
Havock swallowed a lump that had formed in her throat as the lights came back to normal and the holoprojector switched off.
Sergeant Harris returned to the front of the room from a chair he must have been sitting in the front row. "Now that accident cost one civilian their lives. Can any of you tell me how could that driver have prevented that accident from happening?"
"The driver shouldn't have been driving in those conditions without their certification."
Harris shrugged. "Thats true enough, perhaps when the snow started to cover the roads the instructor should have taken over. Alright who else?"
Caden raised his hand. "Sir, the tires should have been covered when the driver was told to do preventative maintenance, that's part of maintenance for a tracked vehicle going into snow conditions."
"Excellent Corporal. Yes, he should have thought of that when he was reminded to do his maintenance check. Alright one more people."
"He shouldn't have hit the brakes." Havock spoke out of turn and got a few looks from her classmates.
"What was that Lance Corporal?" Sergeant Harris raised his eyebrows has he looked over the seats to stare at Havock.
"His vehicle was in a skid, the last thing you should do is slam on the brakes when your in a skid. You ease your foot off the pedal then look and steer in the direction you want the vehicle to go in and don't over steer either. Everything needs to be smooth and gradual, if you start jerking around you'll never get the vehicle under control." Havock finished with a shrug and slid back down in her seat.
Harris was nodding in the front. "Lance Corporal Katash is correct. That is the exact procedure for dealing with a vehicle in a skid. Very good."
"Alright troopers, here is the deal. You need to drive smart and defensively out there. Pay attention to the other drivers and terrain. Anticipate problems so you can solve them before they happen. The most common mistakes drivers make in bad weather are driving too fast for the conditions and underestimating stopping distances." He paused to look over the classroom. Havock silently wondered if he was making sure they were all still awake.
"Tomorrow morning 0800, I want to see you at the Maintenance Garage geared up and ready to go. You will be separated into groups and transported to your vehicles location. Dismissed."
"No, I have no idea where we're going. They won't tell us we just have to meet at the Garage and then we're off." Havock spoke excitedly into the comm to the tiny version of her foster father, Jed.
"That sounds great Hav. Well if its a speeder bike in the city you should be fine." He laughed a bit. Probably remembering the numerous times Hav would sneak away on his speeder bike and take a joy ride through downtown Coronet.
"Heh, yeah wouldn't that be nice. But I doubt it, Jed." Havock glanced at her chono. "I've gotta run, just about time to head over to the garage."
"Alright, take care of yourself Hav."
Hav smiled. "You too, old man." They both laughed as the image faded and shrunk until it was gone.
Havock grabbed her gear and headed out.
When she arrived at the Garage, Sergeant Harris separated them depending on their sub-specialty. That worked out well since there were so few troopers at this point anyway after being separated Havock was in a group with just three others. They boarded a transport and were instructed to strap in. One of the other troopers asked about where they were going which resulted in a terse, "you'll be briefed in flight."
During the flight it was explained to the four troopers that they were traveling to a location in the north region of the planet that was currently experiencing blizzard type weather. Great so snow, how did I know it would be snow.
Havock threw on some extra layers of clothes and was careful to cover her hands and neck with some extra protection. She had no desire to get frostbite on a training mission. As she and the others disembarked from the transport she could see a few various repulsor vehicles lined up in the road, or what she could see of the road from all the snow, ahead. The snow storm made it difficult to make out what Harris was saying when he wasn't yelling directly in the face of the person he was talking to. So Havock waited her turn, shifting from one foot to another to keep as warm as possible in the freezing temperatures.
"Okay Havock, you ready." Harris shouted into Hav's face when it was her turn.
"Yes Sir." She yelled back to him.
The rest of the conversation was a series of shouting with the occasional, "what?" Havock learned that she would be taking out an airspeeder. The particular airspeeder was very similar to the Incom T-47 Airspeeder that Havock was familiar with. She also learned that she just had to follow the navigation system in the airspeeder which was uploaded with the route she would have to follow. This course was fairly simple, no real objective, just navigate the vehicle in the horrid conditions for about five kilometers then turn around and come back.
Havock ran to the cockpit of her airspeeder, more to get out of the cold than for real excitement at the moment.
She checked the systems and strapped in as the engines and computer fired up. She made a quick com check, when she heard the affirmative from Sergeant Harris she started on the course laid out by the computer.
She was coming around the third kilometer when she heard some cross communication breaking though on her channel. Sounded like one of the other troopers on the course ahead of Havock had lost control and was trying to call in a mayday. Havock couldn't really do much to help she just needed to keep an eye out to avoid a collision. She saw the other speeder, almost under control but also at an almost dead stop right outside of her viewport. Havock knew better than to slam on the breaks, so she left the speed completely alone raised the altitude of the speeder so she could cleanly fly right over the other speeder without crashing.
The rest of the flight was uneventful. She managed to make it to the checkpoint and return back with little problems. As she powered down Hav realized she must have been holding the controls tighter than she thought, her arms and hands where a combination of numb and throbbing.
She could not wait to get back on the transport and leave the freezing temperatures, she never wanted to be in a warm climate more in her whole life.